* * *
But it didn’t come, not all through Christmas. Lila helped her mother bake hundreds of cookies, then delivered them all over town, greeting neighbors and old friends with an odd detachment. She made an appointment to see a doctor, visited her brothers and their wives, reacquainted herself with nephews and nieces, feeling a particular joy in that task, thinking of the child who was growing within her.
It was the little things that began to push her from shock into grief. One afternoon in town, she saw a man pull an old-fashioned silver lighter from the pocket of his jeans to light a cigarette. Lila had stopped in her tracks, one hand flying up to the sudden searing pain that stabbed through her chest like a sword.
Another night there had been a movie on television about soldiers on a desperate mission, and one of the actors had Samuel’s accent, even some of his gestures. Lila had endured it as long as possible, then calmly rose, kissed her parents good-night and climbed the stairs, Arrow trailing behind. Behind the safety of her closed door, she sunk to the floor, her arms over her belly, engulfed in waves of sorrow that nearly suffocated her with their intensity.
That night she dreamed of him. They were dancing on the beach in the mist, and his eyelashes glittered with diamonds around eyes black and soft as a warm night sky. Violins poured from the car, alive and enveloping. Against her thighs his legs brushed hers, solid and real. In her dream, his lips were firm, his hands strong against her back, his precious laughter sweet in her ear.
When she awakened, a cold sun pressed the eastern horizon, turning orange the curtains of her bedroom in Oklahoma. Fresh from the world of Samuel, the papered walls of her childhood room seemed bleak beyond measurement, and rising quietly, she left the sleeping house to wander through the fields with Arrow, trying to remember to be thankful.
She crossed a small, primitive bridge over the creek. There, nestled in a low hollow, was a small house. Smoke puffed cheerily from a tin stack on the roof. Arrow lifted his nose eagerly at the rich scent of bacon hanging in the air. Lila rubbed his head fondly. “You’ll like this old lady—I can tell you that,” she told him. “Granny’s always got bacon, and she always shares it with animals.”
Granny met her at the door, a small, wizened woman with a shiny braid that fell to her hips. In spite of her advanced age, there was still a great deal of black amid the silver in her hair, and her eyes in their wreath of wrinkles were as sharp at eighty as they had been at twenty. This was her father’s mother, a stubborn and cheerful Cherokee who still managed her life all alone in this little hollow. “Mornin’,” she said.
“Just got breakfast finished. You could use some eatin’, especially if that baby gonna be big enough, eh?”
As Lila sat down to the feast, she thought of the last time she had seen Samuel, thought of the big breakfast she had fixed for him, and she realized all at once that she would never see his eyes again. Not smiling or grave, not tender or sultry. Not in any way at all.
“I’ve lost heart,” she said quietly.
Granny’s dark eyes met hers over the table, calm and offering something Lila didn’t quite understand. “Baby’s gonna come anyway. It needs you.”
Lila picked up her fork. “You’re right,” she said, suddenly ashamed.
By the time she left with Arrow, she felt immeasurably better. It was not that her grief had disappeared. She knew she would yet struggle awake on grim mornings after spending her dreams with Samuel, and the pain would still be there. But she felt strengthened now, ready to handle the coming months, ready to give something to the baby for whom she had petitioned the heavens.
And there in the field, she stopped in astonishment, aware for the first time of something else. Her back, since the first night she had spent with Samuel, had given her not a second of discomfort. In the fifteen years since the injury had occurred, she had not forgotten her back for more than two or three days at a time. It had never let her.
Perplexed, she wondered if being pregnant would be a more-than-ordinary blessing. She laughed, a hand over her belly, and marveled that laughter was possible.
Finally she had come to understand how her brother Eric had stayed in balance all the time. In spite of the sorrow she carried—and suspected she would always carry—she finally understood. Life, in spite of her grief, stubbornly rustled in trees, gurgled in small streams of water, breathed in the body of her dog, pulsed in her veins.
Samuel had told her one of the fascinations light held for him was the eternal nature of energy. Energy could not be destroyed; it only changed form.
For a moment she felt completely melded with anything alive, anything that had ever lived. Somewhere beyond, her brother and Samuel walked together, their eternal energy simply transformed.
It was very peaceful. When a rumbling sound filled the air, she wasn’t quite sure for a moment what had caused it. Then she glanced up to the sky to see on the horizon more than tiny balls of gray cotton clouds. A bank of heavy black covered the western half of the sky, and flashes of lightning zigzagged through them.
She jumped up, whooping, her arms raised over her head in a cheer. “It’s going to rain, Arrow!” She felt almost deliriously excited. “Let’s get back!”
They raced to the ranch and joined her family in the big kitchen. A particularly virulent blast of thunder rocked the house, and the doorbell rang in response. “I wonder if the lightning did that,” Maria said with a frown. She hurried out of the kitchen.
Suddenly, low in her belly, deep within, Lila felt a flutter of movement. She pressed her hand to the spot, going utterly still in her wonder.
Maria appeared at the door to the kitchen. “Lila,” she said. “There’s someone to see you.”
Puzzled, but too focused on the internal discovery to care much, Lila followed her mother into the living room.
And stopped dead in her tracks.
For there, filling the doorway behind him, was the man who had been on the television the night she had learned of Samuel’s death. His severe face was far more handsome than the picture had shown, balanced as it was by large, soft eyes, but it was unmistakably Mustapha. “What do you want?” she asked, her internal organs quivering.
He glanced at Maria, who gave Lila concerned look. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine. We’ll be okay.” A flash of lightning blazed into the room. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
When Maria had left them, Lila looked back to the man at the door. He stepped forward. “I am Mustapha Bashir.” His words were accented with British intonations instead of French, but beneath were the same hints of the Middle East that Samuel’s voice had carried. It was unexpectedly painful.
“I know who you are,” she said harshly.
He nodded, reaching into his pocket. “I have something that belongs to you.”
“No.” Panic welled in her throat, and she took a step back. “I don’t want it!”
“Things are not always as they seem,” he said quietly, and advanced, grabbing her hand before she could move any farther. He dropped his parcel into her palm.
With a cry Lila recognized her necklace of religious charms, the charms she had placed around Samuel’s warm neck in hopes that it would protect him. They were nearly unrecognizable now. The wooden cross was a stub, and the thunderbird had lost all its turquoise chips. The St. Christopher medal was torn in half.
She covered her mouth, unwilling to embrace the sorrow again, unwilling to feel it, but also unwilling to descend again into the numbness that had so debilitated her. “Why did you kill him?” she whispered.
Mustapha took her hands. “I did not kill him,” he said. His fingers tightened around hers, and Lila allowed the intimacy, a brace on a world that was whirling away from her with dizzy speed. Outside, the rain had begun to fall, but she noticed it only distantly.
“Lila,” he said, and in the word she heard Samuel. “He is alive.”
“Alive?”
He nodded slowly.
; “Oh,” she whispered.
For a long, long moment she simply stared into his gentle brown eyes, unable to grasp the meaning of his words.
And then she swayed weakly forward into the strong chest of her beloved’s brother, tears held back for three long months finally spilling in torrents as wild as the rain falling outside to the parched earth. She wept without thinking, wept copiously, her breath gasping in her throat, chest heaving.
Mustapha held her gently. When she sensed her family in the room, drawn by the sound of her storm, she tried to gather her emotions enough to tell them it was all right. But the more she tried, the worse it became, until she was hiccuping and Mustapha’s chest was soaked. He led her to the couch, still holding her, and Lila rocked. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped, her fingers tangled in the chain.
“No,” he said quietly. “I am sorry I could not come sooner.”
Maria shooed the men from the room and fetched a towel. Lila looked at her. “He’s alive?” she repeated, and the words started a new torrent, to which Lila gave herself up, sobbing into the terry cloth in relief almost too large to be endured.
She didn’t know how long it took before she could breathe again—long enough that her eyes were grainy and her hands were trembling. She washed her face in cold water, then returned to Mustapha. “Can I get you something? Some coffee or something?”
He lifted the cup in his hands. “Your mother has seen to me, and invited me to lunch.” His eyes were gentle. “Then we can go if you like.”
“Go?” Lila said blankly. “Go where?”
Mustapha unaccountably smiled. He patted the spot next to him on the sofa. “Come. Sit. I’ve given you a shock. While you recover, I’ll tell you what happened, hmm?”
At a loss Lila followed instructions, folding her hands in her lap.
“Samuel was shot in Beirut, but I did not do it. Jamal Hassid—ah! You know that name.”
Lila nodded.
“Well, Hassid followed me when I went to meet my brother, and he shot him.” He paused. “So in one sense, I was responsible, as you thought. If I had not been so foolish, perhaps…” He paused, and Lila saw the pain the confession caused him. “But I have the satisfaction of knowing I killed the assassin.”
“Hassid is dead?”
Mustapha nodded soberly. “No more to plague you.” He sipped his coffee. “I would have come for you then, but Samuel was not— He wasn’t—” He sighed. “He nearly died. The Organization thought it wiser if you assumed the worst. When they cleared you, you had left Washington, and we could not find you.”
“But Samuel knew—”
“Only that you were from Oklahoma. That’s all.”
A difficult question hung in her mind. Why hadn’t he come for her himself? “Where is he?”
“Safe, and it is a surprise. He swore me to secrecy.”
“You’re going to take me to him?”
“Dear lady,” Mustapha said, smiling gently, “either that or lose my head.”
Chapter 13
It was a gloomy morning in northern California, wet and misty and dark. Which is how it should have been, Lila thought, her heart in her throat as Mustapha turned up a gravel road lined with trees. At the end of the driveway, a rambling house made of logs sat amid ferns and pines. Behind the house rose blue hills, and beyond she could hear the ocean. Her hand clutched the door handle, and she leaned forward as if to urge the car into a thrust of speed.
The trip had taken nearly sixteen hours, and Lila should have been exhausted, but she’d been nearly this keyed up from the moment she and Mustapha had left the ranch, driving into Oklahoma City to wait for a plane that landed here. Then more driving, into the countryside.
The door of the house came into view, and the car slowed, circled a brick planter and stopped. For an instant Lila was paralyzed with a tumult of emotions. When the front door opened, Arrow whined in the back seat—and then he did something extraordinarily rare for him. He barked.
Jolted, she opened the door, stepping out on unsteady legs. Arrow pushed by her exuberantly.
Standing under the eaves of the deep porch roof was Samuel, looking elegant and very thin. His obsidian eyes were unfathomable, the lines in his face more deeply drawn than before. But harsh as it was, it was a face that would never again look dangerous to her. For a long moment, a moment in which she was unable to think or move or even breathe, she simply filled her eyes with the sight of him leaning over with a smile to greet Arrow.
He straightened, then looked at her. “Lila,” he said on a ragged sigh, holding out one hand.
The spell broke. She raced to him, leaping up the steps to hurtle herself into his arms. His arms crushed her to him, and she pressed her face into his hard shoulder, a shoulder that smelled of his cologne.
“Oh, Lila, how I’ve missed you.” He breathed and pulled her head back roughly to kiss her. She returned it with nearly the same violence, tasting the flavor she had thought lost to her forever. She broke free of his lips, raining kisses over his face and neck, pushing her fingers through his heavy hair.
“Samuel, I can hardly believe it’s you.”
He clasped her face in his hands. A single tear glittered in his eye, a tear he blinked away as he pulled her roughly against him once again. “Let me just hold you.”
And then Lila was weeping again, but this time in unadulterated joy, joy in the press of his arms and the sound of his voice in her ear and his lips on her neck. He rocked her gently. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “that it took so long to tell you.”
“I don’t care, Samuel, I don’t care.” She lifted her head, unmindful of the tears, and pressed her lips to his. She had a sudden and furious need to make love with him, to reaffirm life in the oldest manner, to join again together after the long, dark separation. With a catch in her throat, she whispered, “Let’s go inside.”
“Yes,” he murmured against her lips, “oh, yes.” He tugged her inside, down a short hallway to a bedroom whose windows overlooked the hazy blue of the hills. Once inside he closed the door and backed her against a wall, his chest hard against her breasts. He caught her thighs between his, and a sultry weakness flooded her as the power of his erection pressed into her belly. The errant lock of hair fell over his forehead, giving emphasis to the dangerously passionate heat in his eyes. “I’ve been dreaming of this for months,” he moaned, bending to nip her lower lip.
She tugged his shirt out in back, touching first the heated flesh in the dip of his spine, then moving lower, over the firm round of his hips. “So have I,” she whispered, pulling him more closely to her. “Even when I told myself that you were dead, I dreamed of you. I couldn’t stop.”
He made a sound of pain. “I’m sorry,” he said between kisses, running his hands over her body. She opened her mouth to him, welcoming the hard, possessive thrust of his tongue and the pain of his teeth. His hands pushed between them to encircle her breasts before he yanked her into him again, whirling her around until her legs were against the back of the bed. She fell into the softness, Samuel falling with her. She struggled to pull him closer, to absorb him somehow into her. He pushed himself sideways to open the buttons of her blouse, and Lila stroked the hard rise of flesh below his jeans, fumbling with the zippers and catches.
When Samuel had pushed free the blouse hindering him, and his hand fell at last on the pearled tip of her breast, he let himself pause, breathlessly, to look at her. Her eyes, half-closed, glowed in green passion, and her lips were wet with his kisses. Below the modest blouse she wore was a silky chemise, completely unlike the cotton T-shirts she’d worn at the cabin. She smiled as he trailed a finger over the silk.
“This is for you, Samuel,” she murmured, and rolled away from him to stand up next to the bed. Slowly she slipped off the blouse, and then her jeans, and stood there, arms outstretched, her head cocked in a teasing pose.
Samuel stared at her, his mouth dry. Her lush breasts were embraced and uplifted by cups of salmon-colored lac
e that trailed over her belly. A belly he thought was a little more rounded than it had been. She licked her lip a little shyly. “What do you think?”
Her words spurred him. He sat up at the end of the bed and reached for her, pulling her luscious body closer, a body she had carefully hidden from the eyes of men and now outlined so luxuriously for his pleasure. He ran his hands over her sides, up the swell of her breasts, to her shoulders, looking up to her face. “I think I am the luckiest man in the world,” he whispered. His head swayed forward, and his mouth closed over the inviting nipple so close to his lips. He tasted flesh and lace against his tongue, and felt Lila go limp in his arms.
Beautiful as the chemise was, he could no longer stand to have anything between them. With his lips upon her breasts and then in the hollow of her throat, he shucked his own shirt. He stood up and shed his trousers, then let his hands fall on the tiny straps of her chemise. “Look at me, Lila,” he said.
Her eyes lifted, their green depths glowing with passion and pure, shining love; her hands fell eagerly on his naked body, caressing his legs and buttocks and then coming forward to stroke him. He groaned and grasped her. She flung her arms around him, her teeth digging into his neck. He lifted her, gently settling her on the bed, then entered her in the still dimness of the rainy afternoon, celebrating in the oldest fashion.
And then there were no more thoughts, and he could not be gentle. Nor did it seem that Lila wished him to be. Together they moved in thrashing passion, consumed by their love and the long wait that had cleaved them.
When he felt her shuddering release building around him, he let go, and together they spilled into the light, tumbling like the dust of an exploded comet into the weightless void.
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